My idea for the Skull Merchant rework
I came up with an idea that I believe makes her way more interactive to play and play against while also simplifying her and making her power less confusing for the newer players.
When a survivor gets scanned by a drone that is rotating on its own, the only thing that happens is that they show up on her radar. No haste, no hinder, no claw trap. Their location is revealed on her radar for a certain period of time.
In order for the drones to injure the survivor, Skull Merchant now needs to change their rotation. When a survivor gets scanned while Skull Merchant herself is actively changing the rotation of the drone they lose a health state. The point of this change is to focus on her "red light, green light" identity as the killer. It actively forces both the Skull Merchant player and the survivor to interact with her drones instead of her just leaving them on loops and waiting for the survivors to get scanned three times for the claw trap.
Of course, there is no way for me to test any of this in game so I can't suggest all the details to make this idea balanced. There are many things that BHVR would have to test to find the right spot of her not being neither too strong nor too weak. Would she keep the one scanning line or go back to two? How fast would the drones rotate? Would she need to stand completely still while taking out her radar to rotate them or just significantly slow down from her 4.6m/s movement speed? Would she only be able to injure the survivors this way or would she also be able to down them (if she couldn't down with the drones I suppose this would be the way to keep her claw trap and the Drone Buddy mechanic in the game if BHVR wanted that)? These are the things that I simply can't know without testing them which is why this is just a rough outline for her rework that doesn't go into all the details.
I'm really curious to hear what others think of this idea and if you have any suggestions of improving it. I personally think that this could be an elegant solution to both the issues that survivors have when playing against her and the issues that her mains have with BHVR's proposed rework changing her identity of a trap killer too much.
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